SIMON OLDING, DIRECTOR OF THE CRAFTS STUDY CENTRE

Breon O’Casey exhibition at New Craftsman, 2017. CSC New Craftsman archive.

On 2nd April 1965 The St Ives Times & Echo carried an advertisement in the situations vacant, personal and business pages for a new shop. It was called NEW CRAFTSMAN, situated at number 24 Fore Street, its proprietor was Janet Leach and it was opening to the public the following day.

Advert for the opening of the New Craftsman, 1965

The advert was generous in scale, it left plenty of white open space, as if to parade its modernist credentials (and stand elegantly apart from the more conventional notices for the florists, taxi firms and furniture stores). Six lines in capitals announced the wares and works to be sold: a roll call of fashionable design names and outstanding contemporary potters. These included Le Creuset and Spong (to cater for the kitchen a la Elizabeth David); Arabia, for those with the taste for lean, efficient Finnish glass and china to dress the table; and titans of ceramic work from London (Lucie Rie and Hans Coper) and from the South West (Raymond Finch). There was good space, too, for potters based at The Leach Pottery, a mile up the road from Fore Street: Bernard Leach, Janet herself, and those making independent pots there, such as John Reeve and Gywnn Hanssen.

This was clearly a shop of some attitude and quality, serving the ceramic collector and the serious cook. It marked Janet Leach out as a serious business woman stating a claim for craft.

An exhibition of independent pots by Trevor Corser at New Craftsman. CSC New Craftsman archive.

Works by Shoji Hamada on sale at New Craftsman. CSC New Craftsman archive.

It is a testament to Janet’s foresight, business acumen and vision that New Craftsman is still trading at 24 Fore Street, though on line, of course, in the lockdown. New Craftsman was not the first craft shop that Janet ran in the town. She took over the management of a shop just down Fore Street that had been run by Bernard’s eldest son, David and his business partner Robin Nance. This was ‘The Craftsmens Shop’ and one local advertisement described its stock as baskets, toys and craftwork’. The direction of New Craftsman was set, so to speak, for art, and as Janet and her business partner, Mary ‘Boots’ Redgrave refined and clarified its mission, work by emerging and established St Ives-based painters was added to the stock. Painters such as Bryan Winter, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham sold here.

Janet Leach and Mary 'Boots' Redgrave, Founders of the New Craftsman Gallery. CSC archive.

Paper bag with logos for both New Craftsman and The Craftsmen’s Shop. CSC New Craftsman archive

With grateful thanks to the St Ives Archive, an essential resource for the further research on the history of New Craftsman

The Crafts Study Centre was indebted to Stella Redgrave, Boot’s daughter, for the gift of the archive of New Craftsman, as we are indebted to Ylenia Haase, the current proprietor, for her support of a research project to consider these materials, seek testimony from those associated with the shop, and interrogate local information materials, especially those held in the exemplary St Ives Archives. If circumstances allow, I will give a provisional lecture on the history of the New Craftsman in the St Ives Arts Festival on 17th September, hoping to use this platform as a means of teasing out new information, perhaps new photographs and unpublished stories, to enrich the narrative of this remarkable shop and gallery. The final outcome, it is hoped, will be a book and an associated exhibition at the Crafts Study Centre in 2022.

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